one day I’ll know what this is all about . . .

a well-laid plan, you say?

We have it upon good, or at least upon poetic authority, that the best laid plans “gang aft agley,” and given that my plan laying is generally lacklustre, it should come as no surprise that all did not go quite so well today at Pict Towers as I would have hoped.

The nice man was coming to service the burglar alarm, and in honour of his incipient arrival I had tidied the kitchen (such that it was only in a state that an averagely house-proud person would be just slightly ashamed of), I had even given the pantry (home of the alarm) a bit of a sprucing up, to make it less of a hazard to shipping.

My ultimate act was to close all other doors, so that the monstrous regiment of stuff was not visible. So far, so good. My ruse could have been seen to be useless, had I thought through the fact that he would want to check the sensors in the other rooms, but that was as nothing – then I had the task of telling him that when we set our alarm, as soon as the warning beeping stopped, a high-pitched sound started, mostly to be heard at the front of the house.

Tracking this down has resulted in the hall cupboard being forced to disgorge an extraordinary amount of luggage (particularly when you consider that much of our packing these days, consists of putting stuff in IKEA bags and throwing it in Moomin), the sorting of which now beckons. The culprit – an alarm, never previously known to sound, which was somehow at the bottom of that cupboard – not an ideal place, you would have thought, at least I didn’t plan that!

Well, Pict Towers is once more secure, and if the fully functioning alarm doesn’t frighten off intruders then the risk of stuffalanche should prove a good secondary deterrent. I can only hope.